When this time of year comes, I like to take a short look back, and get ready for the upcoming year. Unfortunately, 2009 has not been a very active year for me from a flying point of view. Because of personal and professional reasons including a move, an incredibely fascinating but demanding job, my flying activities have been limited to getting my Multi-Engine Piston rating on a DA42 TwinStar and test-flying the Tecnam P2002 JF. I also decided to stop my flying to save money for a major project planned in 2010: Flying Across America. Long story short, flying from Florida to California and back in a Cessna 150, together with Jason Schappert, the Flight Instructor and blogger behing M0A.com.

From a blogging point of view, 2009 was focused on writing higher quality posts, but at a lesser frequency. This was to cope with my job and avoid the pitfall of continuing on a high tempo at the price of a lower quality. This was not an easy move to make, but it definitely the correct one. By the way, let me thank you all, readers, who take the time to read what I post here, leave comments, and interact in a way or the other. 2009 was rich in contacts and exchanges and I hope that 2010 will be the same.

The results of my last reader’s poll – Who Are You ? – was a bit of a surprise. You come from all possible corners of aviation, and from all parts of the world. A great bunch of aviators from all horizons, building a small community around this blog – I love that. Thank you. I experienced a bit with social media this year: and you can find more of PlasticPilot on Twitter, join the PlasticPilot and Friends group or become a fan on facebook. Check the contact page to find more about all possible ways to keep in touch.

Let me also say a word to thank Jason Miller and the team at ForeFlight. Their grant help running this blog and they never made any remark or comment regarding the contents of my posting. You’re a great sponsor, thank you for that.

2010 will be a year of travel for me. I’ll be away from home almost two months. Once for work, and then 30 days for the Flying Across America project. But I won’t leave you alone in the dark during these times. I’m already preparing some surprises and will also ask fellow aviation bloggers for some guest posting.

I will certainly tweak the design of features of this blog again in 2010, and if you’ve any wishes, suggestions or request, let me know. I want this blog to be yours, more than ever, so feel free.

As you can imagine, I’m really looking forward to being airborne again, particularly for such a great trip than the one I plan with the Flying Across America project. I’ll report more about it on the blog there, and certainly here as well. Great moments of flying and hangar flying to come!

I wish you a happy new year 2010, full of safe flying, of happy landings, of learning. May you enjoy reading this blog as much as I enjoy posting here, and let us have one more great year celebrating aviation together.

Cheers!

Vincent.

Dear Reader,

Today’s post has nothing to with flying or aviation. I just want to wish you a Merry Christmas. May you spend good times with your family, friends and relatives.

Vincent.

I’m not redefining mathematics but celebrating an almost perfect alignment of events on this blog:

• on 28th of August, plasticpilot.net will turn two years old
• this post is the 700th
• the hits counter hit the 200,000 mark today

Not bad for a blog that started as a way to share experience during my G1000 training. The archives reflect this work and picking favorites is but I tried. Here’s my personal selection:

• Visiting the Pilatus factory in Stans (Switzerland)
• Cirrus 147 Fly-in to Bembridge
• The last words of Swissair 111
• Interview of Jessica Cox, the first armless woman to get her pilot’s certificate
• First flight of my 9 months old daughter (now 3 years old)
• Flight from Bournemouth to Guernsey
• Cannes to Bastia in IFR
• Multi-engine and Instrument check-ride
• The absence of unacceptable hazards
• White-Waltham and the West London Aero-Club
• The less fun part of light aviation
• London-City, the forbidden land in pictures

I could continue this list endlessly. Because I’m the blogger and you the reader our points of view are different. The best part of editing this blog for me is to get in touch with many of you. Be it per comments, e-mail or in real life, exchanging with you is an exhilarating experience and I hope it will continue.

Thank you, and don’t forget: this blog is yours.

Blog posts are like landings: some are good, some are bad, but all must be to a minimal standard to be survivable. And just like flying is more than landing, managing a blog is more than writing posts. Reading and answering comments, reading other blogs and posting comments are important, just like engine monitoring and flight-plan update en-route.

The time I can use for these tasks has been seriously squeezed over the last weeks. I accumulated a small backlog and ended-up in being behind the plane… sorry, behind the blog. This is not a situation I like. I much prefer to blog less than let the quality go down. I’m not announcing the end of this blog, just a little slow down.

Why is my time squeezed ? My life is quite busy, my job enters a new phase of high-activity and the Flying Across America project generates a lot of work. I also have longer posts in preparation for this blog. Not the kind of posts I can write within an hour. This website will turn two by the end of August and I plan some changes. Let me know if you have wishes or ideas.

Now, sit back, relax, and continue enjoying this blog and its archives.

I’m happy, I solved one of my old problems. I often find cool, funny, passionating information on the web that I’d like to share here but which are not sufficient to build a full post. Compilations are a possible way to cope with that but some of these links loose their interest after a couple of days or can not easily be grouped with other ones. I also don’t like to publish short posts on this blog but longer, elaborated ones. Mixing mini-posts in the middle does not match with what I try to build here.

The posts from other blogs and other pilots blogging pages do not really solve the problem: what about links not coming through a feed, what about news, what about videos founds while browsing YouTube or nice pictures that friends and readers send me ?

The solution is now here: Stall warning ! This is a new mini-blog, made of short posts only, all relating to aviation. It has been online for a couple of weeks and has already more than 60 posts in various categories: News, Blog post, Fun, Video, Photo, … There are a handful of updates daily… from a handful of contributors. If you have something to share or want to join as a contributor and eventually share the revenue, feel free to contact me.

I really hope you will enjoy stall warning as I enjoy to animate it and that we’ll make it a success together ! Visit it, enjoy it, talke about it, and feel free to comment about it here, or there.

If you’re not a geek like me, the link between Facebook, Twitter, Likaholix and other “social media” is probably a bit of a mystery for you. I hesitated a lot before writing this post because it could sound strange, out of scope and even disgusting to some of you and I don’t want to bore you. I decided to take the risk after getting in touch with Niklas Rahkonen via the “Friends of Aviation” group on Facebook. Nick is really motivated about encouraging aviation and meeting him was a real pleasure. I’ll post more about him and his activities later, but the way we got in touch was a perfect example of how social networks can help aviation.

Having “friends” on Facebook or following other twitters might seem futile and useless… One of the most frequent complain heard in flying clubs is that it’s no longer “as before”, that there is no more “club spirit”, that they become more “renting agencies” than “aviatior clubs”. At a time where the number of pilots is decreasing, communicating and acting as a community is more important than ever, but this requires time – exactly what most of us don’t have. Finding time to go flying is not always easy, and socializing is not easier. Is this really true ? If you think of socialization in the sense of what clubs used to be, yes. But if you think of it differently, it is exactly what Facebook, Twitter and other services offer.

Many of you got in touch with me via this blog and this is the thing I like the most in editing it. Discussing per e-mail, gmail chat, Facebook or twitter does not make the conversation meaningless. The new communication tools are worth what users do with them. Many persons I’m now in touch with are well beyond the area I could reach if I had to meet them “in person” and the exchanges we have are of equivalent (if not better…) quality as what I had with some club-members where I used to fly.

If you’re not convinced yet, here are some links for you. At first you can read what other aviation bloggers are publishing. If you’re a Twitter fan you can follow me or see who I’m following from my Twitter feed. Never heard of Twitter ? This is a micro-blogging service, where authors are limited to 140 characters pre “post”. Perfect for short news and readers who don’t have a lot of time. Facebook requires more time and personal involvement. After getting an account you can get in touch with persons you know, join groups, discuss about almost any topic and learn to know new friends. This is how I got in touch with Nick and many others, and I can’t imagine any other way this could have been possible. If you’re already on Facebook or want to join, have a look at the “PlasticPilot and friends” group or become a fan via the PlasticPilot page.

The last service I joined is the newly created likaholix.com where users can share things they like. It is still in alpha mode and on invitation only, but I received a handful of invites. Contact me if you want one – no need to have a website or a blog. I joined last week and hope that being an early adopter will facilitate the creation of a strong general aviation community there.

I can understand that you still regret the spirit of the good old times, just like some pilots regret the non-radio flying or the steam gauges panels. There is nothing wrong with that – Piper L4s, SuperCubs still fly superbly and will continue to offer hours of fun, just like aero-club bars. The social networking tools offer new possibilities to a new kind of pilots. Not better or worse, just different, and they answer the need for being a community. Join today.

PS: if you’re an aviation twitter or have an aviation-related facebook group or blog, don’t hesitate to leave a link in comment.

Thank to you, readers, this blog has been growing continuously to a very respectable size. I did not expect that when I started it and it turned from a funny experiment to a serious hobby. To keep up with the pace and quality you expect, I decided to bring it one step further. No worries, you won’t have to subscribe to get more – it’s the other way round: you’ll get more and for free. Larger aircraft have crew of two, this blog will now have a crew of not less than five ! Let me introduce the new crew members.

Matthew, who earlier invited me for a flight in a Cirrus SR22, is the editor of Golf Hotel Whiskey, where he shares golf, hotels, pubs and restaurant tips for pilots, and much more. He is Writer in chief at Articulate Marketing and author of the Bad Language blog. He has a CPL/IR and over 500 hours. He already posted here about the specifics of flying in UK and will contribute with more posts about the Cirrus, amongst others.

Julien, on of the most active commenters, will re-activate the “Best of the web” post series, prepare best-of posts and has some ideas about a newsletter… Julien is a private pilot based at Bankstown airport near Sydney, Australia where he flies with the Schofields Flying Club. He started learning to fly in Cessnas in 2007 at the Redcliffe Aero Club near Brisbane, Australia and received his PPL in 2008. Julien now flies Arrows and Archers and is working towards a Night VFR rating. He keeps a personal blog to record and share his flying experience. When on the ground, Julien can be found either earning money to go flying again through a management job in an IT research center, or enjoying life in beautiful Sydney with his wife and their cat.

Patrick is the blogger behind www.aviationchatter.com, an online flight training resource with reflections from the flight training world, aviation news, and pilot insights and lessons learned from years of experience. He flies the Canadair CRJ-200 for a US regional airline and will post here about the airline world.

Axel is the former editor of www.pilot-net.com. He stopped blogging by lack of time, but missed it. He will contribute here about his training in Florida and hopefully about his career as professional pilot. The posts from his previous blog will be re-published here – don’t miss the part about his (courageous) decision to move from Norway to Florida, nor the ones about his first solo, they are simply exhilarating. Many of his photos will also be transferred in the photo galleries.

I made some changes to the layout and styling of this blog. For the tech-savvy readers, I updated the css and the HTML content of the second and third column. For the othres, just click the “refresh” button of your browser to get the new layout – particularly if you don’t see the dark-blue bars on each side.

I hope you’ll like this new layout styling. Any comment is welcome, particularly to say that you like the new look of this blog. If you’re an RSS subscriber, pay a visit to the site and let me know if you like it.

A Boeing 737-800 operated by Turkish crashed shortly before landing at Amsterdam Schipol. The aircraft was broken in three parts but did not catch fire. Many passengers could leave the wreckage on their own, but some others were killed, including the captain and first-officer. Investigators are at work. These are facts – any information about factors or (even worse) causes are speculation. My thoughts and sympathy go to the victims and their relatives. Loosing someone in such brutal and sudden circumstances is always a tragedy.

I don’t have additional information and do not want to speculate about this accident. If you want to read more about it, google, CNN, reuters, the BBC and many other news sites are your friends. Instead of spending my daily blogging time by finding links that will become irrelevant in a couple of days, I decided to further develop the page dedicated to Aviation Accidents.

The Aviation Accidents page went online almost six months ago and was the first of a series of theme-oriented pages which I continue to develop on this website. Check the “Read more about…” section in the navigation column to find more pages. Aviation accidents is the perfect example of topic that’s not time related and thus better addressed via a page than specific posts. This page naturally contains links to other posts about aviation accidents but also tips to get a better understanding of accidents, investigation and media reaction.

The list of links to accident reports that was published in the first version of this page is still present and will continue to evolve over time. It’s always fascinating to see how different the final report is from the initial media report and the first speculations.

So if you’re interested in this topic, click here to visit my Aviation Accidents page, and if you like it don’t forget to link to it or send a link to your friends.

The final phase of the move to our new house is now started. I’m indeed writing this post with my laptop by the window because this is the only spot where my UMTS modem has good reception – everywhere else it downgrades to GPRS and this is way to slow for anything else than reading e-mails. ADSL should not be working before two or three weeks, despite the notification I sent in due time to my service provider… If aviation was managed like telecom, I would not be a passenger anymore.

The only positive thing is that I can enjoy the view from my new window. After our last move, almost one year ago, I posted about the roof windows I had there, and how distracting they were. My new office has no such windows but it is perfectly oriented to look at the departure from Frankfurt airport’s runway 18. We get some noise but not that much, and looking at the departures makes me smile… You can expect pictures from this window soon – well, when I’ll find out in which box is the camera.

I really look forward at taking some training again in April and studying the MEP / DA42 theory helps me to cope with the stress induced by the move. Don’t be surprised if the pace of my posting gets a bit slower over the next weeks, this is because of the lack of Internet connection and all the post-move tasks, combined with all the theory to study. But be sure that more about the DA42 will follow soon…